In the ever-deepening hush that followed, he bowed his head and let the tears fall. ‘Hermann …’ he said. ‘Hermann, I needed you. Together we might have made it through this lousy war; alone, I have no chance.’
Little by little the snow in the pot began to melt. St-Cyr held his hands to the stove. Alone in this world, in this carnival, this field office wagon, he waited. He would have a tisane of hot water. Miraculously the three ampoules of Evipan that Victoria Bodicker had handed over had been spared. He would set them on the drawing table in a row beneath that of the liqueur glasses Hermann had found.
The carving he would put at the top-ah, oui, oui, that would be best. ‘Boudicca who rode again and with such bravery.’
A bead of solder, a swatch of grey-green cloth, the cutthroat and partly masticated, bloodstained ball of papier-mache followed. The phosphorescent swastika button a uniform would need was next, and the pieces from broken phonograph recordings of Das Rheingold und Die Walkure. The personals columns from the newspapers Hermann had recovered were laid to one side, especially that of 20 January 1943’s Munchner Neueste Nachrichten.
The pocket watch was placed there too, and the earring. The copy of Schone Madchen in der Natur was followed by the rusty nail and pebble against which it had been ground. Torn photos from home were added, those of Paulette Thomas who would soon receive notice of her loss. To these he added the Lagermark, the two rose-coloured buttons, the wedding ring with its Gallic scrollwork, the notebook and lastly its torn corner-scrap with the chemical formulae and equations.
So many items, the bits and pieces of lives lost, their last register. Should he burn them all? Could he leave the investigation unfinished or go it alone?
‘Eugene Thomas,’ he said, sipping from the pot and blowing on the water. ‘Renee Ekkehard commits “suicide” and this has a profound effect on Sophie Schrijen, as it must have had on Victoria. But Sophie’s the one closest to Eugene and they talk-they must have. He’s been sentenced to death by his comrades and, though he would not have been told this by them, would have sensed it. She tells him Renee was murdered. He already knows why that has happened and sees no hope even in the plan of he and his fellow prisoners, all of whom would most surely be arrested, interrogated and then executed. He knows only that the killing has just begun.
‘I don’t think anyone murdered him, Hermann,’ he said. Though Hermann was gone from him, it did help to talk to him just as it had with Renee Ekkehard and Eugene Thomas. ‘Our chemist would have been in daily contact with Lowe Schrijen. He would have known that for him, it was only a matter of days. We’ll have to leave it at a suicide, a touch of doubt I don’t like, of course-merde alors, it’s not in my nature but with no chance of my interviewing either of those two Postzensuren, his laboratory assistants either, or any of his combine, what else can I do, and what, please, has happened to those men?
‘At some point after Eugene Thomas’s death, Sophie Schrijen put these two buttons into his pockets. She must have wanted us to look closely at your colonel, Hermann, and to not accept everything he would tell us, must also have wanted to distract us from that father of hers. Brokenhearted, she had rebelled at everything she and her comrades had stood for, was in fear for her own life, and had been told, I’m certain, that she had no other choice.’
They would never know for sure, of course. Like so many aspects of this war, too much was bound to remain unanswered.
The carved staghorn buttons the colonel had left lying on his desk were here too, with the three beechwood bobbins still wound with their thread, and the swatch of wood-fibre silk.
‘Raymond Maillotte didn’t kill Eugene Thomas. He told you, Hermann, that they hadn’t decided on who was to carry out the sentence or how.’
Warmed a little now, St-Cyr took to searching through the diagrams those men had drawn and when he had one of the fete, longed for tobacco and his pipe, and for time to pursue the investigation.
‘There was to have been a brazier at each table, Hermann.’ He pointed them out. ‘The torches at either side of the booths. Torches dipped in tallow and beeswax, and containing guncotton no doubt.’
The torches were to have been held in place by ropes that ran from side to side above the Wheel of Fortune’s booth and that of the Jeu de massacre, but those ropes were then to be linked to another that made its way to the back above the table that separated the two booths. ‘When lit by the Gauleiter shy; Wagner and Lowe Schrijen, Hermann, they would have torched the sky before toppling inward to shower flaming debris shy; onto the pyramids of papier-mache balls to trigger the trinitrophenol.
‘Boudicca,’ he said, and picking up the little carving, held it a moment as if undecided, for always he liked to have a memento of each investigation, yet now of course, there would be no sense in that. ‘Adieu, my queen. I regret that I met you only in my imagination.’ Dropping it into the stove, he quickly pocketed the watch and tossed everything else in except for the ampoules and the cutthroat. These he would keep.
‘For later, mon vieux. For later.’
At first light, the memories came hard and fast, but it was bitterly cold. Hermann would have said, Why wait out here when you can stay by the stove?
Hermann …
So hard was the frost, a three-metre thick blanket of icy fog shrouded the carnival and adjacent fields, the Kastenwald also. When sunlight finally touched the topmost girders of the Ferris wheel, St-Cyr started out. He would have to find Hermann’s body, would have to see that it was laid out properly and covered with something. He couldn’t leave him and simply walk away to be arrested.
Silent as always at such times, three ravens took flight. Startled, he watched them, the heart racing. Would they lead him to Hermann, had they pecked out his eyes?
All too soon he lost sight of the Phantom Queen. ‘It’s that kind of place, Hermann,’ he said.
One brightly painted iron standard lay on the ground, and then another, and through the fog, he could see that they were bent and twisted and blood-spattered. The village cop, the priest, the bailiff and schoolteacher. ‘Hermann,’ he cried out. ‘Hermann, where are you?’
As if he could have answered.
A crater was all that was left of the wagon that had held the Jeu de massacre. Debris was scattered. Sophie Schrijen lacked both face and hands and most of her clothing. Had Hermann found her, he would have gone right out of his mind. Frost-numbed Surete fingers dragged a bit of frozen canvas over her, St-Cyr making the sign of the Cross, though would it do any good? ‘God has forgotten us, mademoiselle. The SS won’t. At 1000 hours they’ll be here in force.’
Sounds were muffled, blood was everywhere in the snow, this life of theirs, no life at all. ‘Hermann,’ he said.
The sound grew but faintly, and when he stumbled toward it, he passed by the House of Mirrors, much of which had been flattened, found the Ideal Caterpillar ghostlike in the fog, the Noah’s Ark no better.
‘Colonel,’ he heard himself saying as Rasche got out of that little car of his.
There wasn’t any sense in asking St-Cyr where Kohler was. It was written in the way he stood, the tears that were frozen to his cheeks. ‘Get in and I’ll take you to the station at Rouffach. It’s to the south of Kolmar where, hopefully, you won’t be stopped from boarding.’
‘Not until we find my partner. You sent Herr Lutze out here on that Saturday afternoon but didn’t bother to discover Renee Ekkehard’s body until the following Tuesday?’